Over the past few years the newsletter articles have largely concentrated on specific windows created by the Connick Studio.  This issue is devoted to reintroducing our readers to the history and philosophy of the Connick Studio.

THE LIGHT COMES FIRST; THE COLOR NATURALLY FOLLOWS.  Like all adventurers and defenders of Light, Charles J. Connick and his associates manifest the noble qualities of that intangible spirit of strength, courage, daring, and the thorough belief in one's dreams to become reality for all to see and witness.  "I want to make beautiful interiors for both churches and souls."

In the time of American stained glass, when the opalescent picture window was fashionable and therefore preferred, Charles Connick saw the Light and determined to "rescue stained glass from the abysmal depths of opalescent glass" in which "all activity and light was stopped as with a blanket".  Charles Connick and his fellow workers in Light embraced a spiritual vision linked with healthy ideals to create some of America's finest stained glass.  Just as Nature fully awakes with the Spring, a Connick window comes alive in the light of day to reveal its many moods as the day, the weather, the season unfolds.

Charles J. Connick founded his studio and workshop at Nine Harcourt Street, Boston in 1912.  During his lietime of devotion to the craft of stained glass, Mr. Connick was awarded the honorary degree of Master of Fine Arts, Princeton University, 1932; Doctor of Fine Arts, Boston University, 1938; the Gold Medal of the Panama Pacific Exposition at San Francisco in 1915; the Logan Medal of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1917 and 1921; the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts Medal in 1920; the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects (Craftsmanship medal) in 1925.

In 1937 Random House published Charles Connick's great work, Adventures in Light and Color, modestly subtitled "an introduction to the stained glass craft".  In the Sunday Times (London) November 14, 1937, we find the following: "One must endorse Mr. Connick's enthusiasm.  He has produced a great book, as useful as it is lovely, which will become the standard work on its subject, and which should be in the possession of all who have ever stood entranced before the beauty of stained glass at its most magical."

Harold Cummings, President of the Stained Glass Association wrote in 1946, "Mr. Connick was in heart a poet, a dreamer, a preacher of the gospel of Stained Glass, as well as a master craftsman of first rank.  He is a brilliant and steadily gleaming star of our own time, and his light will shine far down the ages."

The Connick Studio, as a cooperative, was inherited by the artists at Charles J. Connick's passing in 1945.  As president and leader, Orin E. Skinner, Mr. Connick's 'left-handed right hand man', along with the other energetic, devoted artists, continued the Studio's work--the beauty, the love of light, and the joy in color that Charles Connick began.  The artists unanimously decided to close the Studio in 1986.  Mr. Skinner was 94 years old.

The Charles J. Connick Stained Glass Foundation, established in 1985, and the Boston Public Library received the Studio's materials and records.  We are mutually dedicated to preserving these holdings in order to provide information and to perpetuate the Connick ideals of stained glass.